Citizens stripped of their islands by US and UK for air bases....

[dutchdemocrat]

No place called home

Britain is putting US interests on Diego Garcia above the right of Chagossians to return to their islands

Mark Curtis
Friday October 10, 2003
The Guardian

There are people and there are unpeople. Afghan and Iraqi victims of Blair's wars count among the latter - lives expendable in the pursuit of western power. Yet there is a group of unpeople who have been even more forgotten and they were yesterday knocked for six, not by "smart" British bombs but by smart government lawyers.
The story begins in 1968, when the Chagossians were flung off their homeland islands in the Indian Ocean to make way for a US military base. Some were tricked into leaving on the promise of a free voyage; others physically removed. The Chagos islands include Diego Garcia, from which US bombers have attacked Iraq and Afghanistan, and where al-Qaida suspects are being held in circumstances even more secret than in Cuba.

The islanders have long campaigned for compensation and the right to return, but the Blair government set itself against the Chagossians, and its sustained legal campaign has just been rewarded with a high court ruling that the Chagossians' claim has "no reasonable grounds".

When Britain depopulated the islands, most of the Chagossians ended up living in the poverty-stricken slums of the Mauritian capital, Port Louis. Some died of starvation in the early years of exile and many, without livelihoods or hope, committed suicide. Many within the community, now numbering around 8,000, continue a life in poverty.

-----------SNIP

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1059863,00.html

[dutchdemocrat]

1. Exiled islanders lose London court fight over US air bases

Exiled islanders lose London court fight over US air bases


Exiled islanders lose London court fight
Thu 9 October, 2003 12:22 BST

LONDON (Reuters) - Thousands of Indian Ocean islanders forcibly removed from their homes at the height of the Cold War to make way for a U.S. military base have lost a court fight in Britain for financial compensation and the right to return.

Up to 2,000 people from Britain's Diego Garcia and other islands in the Chagos chain were uprooted from their homes and shipped to the Mauritius islands in the early 1970s after a deal was struck to build an American air base.

Diego Garcia remains a strategic U.S. military base, its airfields and long-range bombers recently called into action for the attack on Iraq that removed Saddam Hussein from power.

In delivering his decision, Justice Duncan Ouseley said there was no legal basis to argue that the islanders had been subjected to "unlawful exile".

He dismissed their calls for financial compensation from the British government but also chastised the government over its treatment of the islanders:

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=385750§ion=news

[dutchdemocrat]

2. Diego Garcia islanders await call to go home

Diego Garcia islanders await call to go home

Exiled from paradise, a whole community has fought for 30 years. Now their struggle is waged from Crawley

Paul Harris and Martin Bright
Sunday July 27, 2003
The Observer

Clemencia Cherry smiled as she remembered the last time she saw her island home of Diego Garcia. It was a glimpse of a palm-fringed atoll receding on the tropical horizon as a steamer took her on holiday to Mauritius. She was 22.
Now Cherry is a grandmother, whose careworn face speaks of a lifetime in exile. She never saw her homeland again. When she tried to return, British officials would not allow her on a boat. Diego Garcia was to become a US military base and a permit was now needed to go there, she was told. She did not qualify for one. No islander did. Cherry and her husband and young family were exiled. 'It was my home. It was where I belonged,' she said.

Cherry and thousands of other islanders were the victims of a brutal depopulation strategy by Britain in the 1960s and 1970s which sought to hand over an empty island to the United States for use as a key military base. The depopulation campaign ended in 1973 with the removal of the last islanders, who were dumped on the quays of the Mauritian capital, Port Louis.

For more than three decades the Diego Garcians, who call themselves the Ilois and inhabited the Chagos archipelago of which Diego Garcia is the largest island, have dreamed of going home. Now they are on the move again. And their destination is the unlikely target of Crawley in Sussex, now home to more than 100 Diego Garcians.

After a long court battle, the community won the right to full British citizenship several years ago and, after saving for one-way tickets, the Ilois are starting to arrive in Britain. The first group came last September, a second group came in June and a third group arrived suddenly two weeks ago.

The community numbers some 5,000 and, faced with poverty and racism in Mauritius, few want to stay there. Crawley was chosen because Gatwick Airport sits nearby. Now the town is the new home of a thriving community of Diego Garcians strung out in hotels and council estates.'If we were allowed to go back, then none us would ever want to come here,' said Allan Vincatassin, their unofficial representitive.

The Diego Garcians who have made it to Crawley have often sold off all their possessions to pay for the tickets or have worked and saved for more than a year at the poorly paid manual jobs that are their lot in Mauritius. But behind the exodus is simply the desire to go home.

SNIP

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1006618,00.html

This is truly a tragedy and one that should be handled by the world court in the Hague, not by some old crony white-wigged judge in London who has political friends who probably had a hand in the whole affair.

[dutchdemocrat]

3. Tossed out on the streets... Disgraceful

Tossed out on the streets... Disgraceful

Edited on Thu Oct-09-03 01:43 PM by dutchdemocrat
Islanders march on Westminster Sep 17 2003




By Maheesha Kottegoda


EXILED islanders spent the night sleeping rough on the streets outside Parliament after they were turfed out of a town hotel.

The 10 Diego Garcian men slept at Westminster on Monday demanding to be returned home if housing could not be found for them in Crawley.

Spokesman for the islanders, Gabriel Valentin, said: "These people do not have money, they have no place to go and no food to eat.

"They are all destitute. These people do not know where their next meal is coming from.

"We will sleep outside Parliament for as long as it takes.

"We want to be returned to our island. We don't want their money, we want our money and our island."

The Diego Garcians, who hold British passports, have travelled from Mauritius and France, where they have been living since the British Government forced them from their homeland in the 1970s to make way for a military air base.

A total of 72 Diego Garcians were given their marching orders when West Sussex

County Council stopped paying for their rooms at the Premier Lodge, in Gossops Green, on Monday.

SNIP

http://icsurreyonline.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0400crawley/content_objectid=13419233_method=full_siteid=50101_headline=-Islanders-march-on-Westminster-name_page.html

[Man_in_the_Moon]

4. Wasnt this posted yesterday? -nt

[dutchdemocrat]

5. Yes...

just following up on it. Seems no one was really interested due to the Debate and Arnie woes.

Thought I would give it another plug.